The Hills Are Alive

Heidi Pratt
“I think in my mind, looking back, the hardest scene for me to watch is when I had my surgery and I go back to Colorado to talk to my mom about it for the first time. It was really challenging and I was in so much pain, I could hardly talk. I was so young and I just didn’t, like, have a team behind me. Not getting along with my family was really hard, but a lot of good came out of the original show. My favorite moment was when Spencer and I eloped in Mexico. MTV was so mad at us because we did it secretly with US Weekly and they shot a cover of us down there. We ended up going back on Thanksgiving and they tried to recapture whatever they could and retell the story a bit. After we got married, and even when we’d just gotten together, Spencer and I weren’t really able to be a part of the group on the original show. Now, with the reboot, we’re integrated with the rest of the cast.”

There was also the fact of their glamorous—or glamour-adjacent—professional careers: Years before Vanderpump Rules won over audiences with its coverage of the tumultuous travails of West Hollywood-based restaurant staffers, Conrad and company made watching the inner lives and foibles of young people just starting out on the lower rungs of aspirational careers—as Teen Vogue interns, PR assistants, and record company and photo studio receptionists—a verifiable entertainment option. “This was on the heels of The Devil Wears Prada, and that’s what the producers wanted me to be,” Lisa Love (then Vogue and Teen Vogue’s West Coast Director) said of her role on the show, which was as a sort of chilly and intimidating headmistress-type boss, a character entirely at odds with Love’s real-life personality. This was but one of the ways that the show was not exactly up-front with its viewers about the role its writers and crew played in steering the series of events it depicted. While Laguna Beach reportedly opted to document its subjects’ lives rather than influence them, the “scripted reality” ethos behind The Hills “made the viewers always question ‘is it real or is it fake’ and changed the television landscape forever,” executive producer Liz Gateley told MTV. The network only lifted the curtain once, during the series finale in 2010—after an emotional street scene underneath the Hollywood sign, the camera pulls back to reveal a sound stage and camera crew—intended, the show’s creator Adam DiVello said later, as a meta-commentary “wink” at the audience. But most of the time, as with tans, or boobs, or handbags, for viewers, how much “fake” mattered was a matter of opinion.

MTV’s production team was there to gently steer the ship to rockier (and more interesting) waters, whether that meant being out with the cast until until 4:00 a.m. at Les Deux, or there at 9:00 a.m. the next morning in Love’s office. Conrad and Port worked side-by-side in a “fashion closet” Condé Nast helped MTV stage in L.A.; as interns, they assisted with the Teen Vogue Young Hollywood party and various shoots and fashion shows. For many viewers it was a view into the elusive world of fashion magazines, replete with the kind of dreamy last minute opportunities that typically only come from the mind of a Hollywood writer’s room, like when Love asked Conrad to spend the summer interning in the Vogue office in Paris. Conrad chose to stay behind to focus on then-boyfriend, Jason Wahler, instead, and was on the receiving end of one of the great lines of the reality genre to date: “She’ll always be known as the girl who didn’t go to Paris.” (Though uttered by Love, the sentiment was actually from Vogue Editor in Chief and Condé Nast Creative Director Anna Wintour: “Anna asked me what happened with ‘the girl who didn’t go to Paris,’ and the next time I saw Lauren, I just said it,” Love says: “The writers ran with it.”)

Audrina Patridge
“The very first scene I filmed for The Hills was when I was laying out by the pool where I lived and I met Heidi. Adam DiVello, the producer, had been at the Villas the week before and came up to me asking if I’d be interested in doing the show. It was just one of those lucky Hollywood stories, right place, right time. I remember the first time I cried while being taped. Justin Bobby picked me up on his Harley and we went to a party and later, he just left without saying goodbye. I was emotional and we were drinking. That’s when Lauren made me laugh by saying ‘homeboy wore combat boots to the beach.’ The new show is a little older, a little sexier, and more adult.”

In the end, no one really went anywhere. Love and Port (“chosen” to go to Paris in Conrad’s stead) filmed a grand departure scene curbside at LAX, then turned around and went right back home. “That was so ridiculous,” Port remembers. “It wasn’t an ideal situation, but I thought, okay, this is good for me because I really was pursuing a career in fashion. I thought it showed that I was down and determined to do this. It was very Anne Hathaway as Andy Sachs [from The Devil Wears Prada]. I got dressed up in an airport look and went for it.” After the end of the first season, as both Love and Teen Vogue then–editor in chief Amy Astley attest, hundreds of applications for internships were flooding in every day.

The Hills: New Beginnings will premiere this summer on MTV. Heidi is back, this time with her husband and fellow Hills alum and tabloid fixture, Spencer Pratt, and their 18-month-old son, Gunnar. ““Reality TV is kind of a career for Spencer and I at this point,” Pratt says; both appeared on programs like Marriage Bootcamp and Big Brother after The Hills, and have decorated their house with a combination of the energy-healing crystals they sell and magazine covers detailing even the most unflattering of their exploits. “I used to want to work in fashion. I did a year abroad in high school in Italy and met Ottavio Missoni. I had the opportunity to travel to Milan and meet the rest of the Missoni family and go to the fashion shows. And back in Colorado, I was the only one who kept Manolo Blahniks in my locker. It was a mountain town and no one wore heels,” Pratt says. “Then I did season one of The Hills and after studying at FIDM for a while, I started to really see the magic of it all. The world really opened up for me and I realized the possibilities this job could provide.”

Mischa Barton
“I didn’t do well as a young person letting people into my private life. I kind of feel like, in a weird way, I was on The Hills, even though I’d never seen it. My whole life was publicized in a fake way and everything about me was made up while I was on The O.C., which ran simultaneously with The Hills. [The Hills] was the reality version of The O.C., and everyone was so obsessed with it. I remember Nicole Richie was really into them and she would pull me over into a parking lot and be like ‘they’re filming The Hills in there, we have to go see!’ They were the OG reality T.V. stars.”

Audrina Patridge, Whitney Port, Justin Bobby, and Stephanie Pratt, Spencer’s sister (who stars in Made in Chelsea, essentially a British version of The Hills), will all appear in the reboot. They will be joined by new cast members who mostly grew up watching them on MTV: Jason Wahler’s wife, Ashley Wahler; Kaitlynn Jenner, who is married to Brody Jenner; and Mischa Barton, the former star of the show that inspired it all, The O.C. The new plotlines will still center around the female stars—only this time they have more established careers, better real estate, and occasionally babies to contend with, alongside the same old drama. Mostly, the cast says, New Beginnings is about getting a real look inside their lives.

Lauren Conrad, around whom this entire universe once turned, is now an author and lifestyle blogger; she will not be participating in the reboot. Neither will Kristin Cavallari (currently starring in a reality series of her own on a different network), or Lo Bosworth. “I have found that being a known person makes me feel a little bit uncomfortable, especially in the context of reality T.V.,” says Bosworth, who launched a feminine hygiene and personal care company called Love Wellness in 2016. “It takes a certain personality type, and I just don’t have that in me.”

If The Hills was an exercise in how far faux-reality could go, New Beginnings is really a study in the aftermath. Times have changed; “influence” is now a bonafide career path. “Lauren and Whitney and the entire cast of the original show kind of prefigured what you see happening now with social media influencers like Leandra Medine or Arielle Charnas, or [Glossier CEO] Emily Weiss, who was once on The Hills” as a competitive fellow Teen Vogue intern posed as an arch-rival for Conrad. “There are millions now,” Amy Astley, former editor in chief of Teen Vogue and current editor in chief of Architectural Digest explains. “They paved the way . . . . I think that the show was a really interesting and significant moment in the trajectory of women as personalities and entrepreneurs. They were savvy to pick up on that.”

Kaitlynn Carter Jenner
I watched The Hills religiously, and I mean, I never in a million years thought I’d be on it. I was the same age as the rest of the women who were on the show at the time and I feel like it helped me see that there was a whole other world out there and endless opportunities. The fashion industry didn’t exist where I was from in Peterborough, New Hampshire. Crazy fun fact: Heidi and I were both born in Peterborough at the same hospital. This was before she moved to Colorado when she was little but, kind of crazy. I actually knew a lot of the girls before we started filming, because of [my husband] Brody [Jenner]. I think he was definitely hesitant to be in on the show at first for the same reason he doesn’t really love doing red carpet appearances. I think he feels like people are more interested in his extended family [the Kardashian-Jenners] and he’s over talking about that. It wasn’t too bad of an adjustment in terms of the actual filming and being on camera, but it was a huge adjustment having people so involved in our lives. You are sacrificing a lot of privacy and it was far more invasive than I’d anticipated. The big selling point for us was to have the opportunity to showcase our life together and our businesses. He’s producing music and I have my ecommerce platform called Foray.”

Whitney Port
“The whole first season was such an out of body experience for me. Way at the beginning it was very much like, we’re going to put you in real scenarios and not really tell you what’s going on, which is how I think they were able to get everybody to be themselves at first. Then you get to a certain point where things get boring, so the writers and producers had to start thinking about how to spice things up and make certain things more dramatic. I really did take my job at Teen Vogue seriously though. I showed up, I worked hard. To this day I do have this insecurity that people don’t take me seriously because I was on a reality show where people thought that I was like this version of myself. People viewed me as this kind of airhead blonde chick from L.A. that was along for the ride, and that’s not who I am.”

Ashley Wahler
“There were so many iconic moments from the original show. You had the relationship between Audrina and Justin Bobby, the famous Lauren not going to Paris moment. I loved everything in Whitney’s storyline, how she stepped in as a model when one of the runway girls didn’t show up. It made L.A. look really glamorous and fun. That being said, I don’t think I could have done it back then. I’m a very different person today than I was in my 20s. You don’t know who you are yet. Jason and I both felt like now was a really good time to join New Beginnings. We were married in 2013 and we have an 18-month-old named Delilah Ray now. Jason’s been really open about his struggle with addiction and you’ll see that on the show. Having the cameras around us felt very natural and it wasn’t uncomfortable for me at all because I’m such a vulnerable person. I think being open on camera was easy for me but the schedule got tough at times. I’m still a full-time hairdresser, so I work at the salon, I’m trying to work on my lifestyle blog, and I have a child so I think just trying to do everything all at once felt a little overwhelming, but filming really helped me have more date nights and girl time and connecting with the amazing cast was so nice. It was fun to build those relationships.”

Stephanie Pratt
“I can remember one of the earliest episodes [of The Hills], I was driving in my X5 with my friend Alicia, drinking Red Bulls and driving to the club to yell at Brody for taking Lauren’s side over my brother’s in a fight about Heidi and their relationship. I was listening to Mobb Deep, “Quiet Storm”, I think it was, and I was just so pumped on adrenaline, not really thinking about the consequences. I still never think about the consequences whenever I do anything, which is really bad. But anyway, I thought it was super unfair that Brody was siding with this girl instead of Spencer who he’s known since he was 15 and I was like, I am going to take them down. I got there, the crew was mic-ing me in the parking lot and I was in this dumb blue dress and I was just so nervous. They were trying to explain to me where the table was inside the club and I was like, wait, I’m really bad with directions, I’m dyslexic, so I’m not going to find it. Well I did, it looked like a real movie set with all of the lights and equipment and I went over and screamed at them. Later, I ended up having secret friend dates with Lauren in Hollywood. Becoming friends with her destroyed my relationship with Spencer. We didn’t speak for a long time. If this new show hadn’t happened, it would have been 10, 11, 20 more years of not seeing or speaking to my brother. The reboot is a miracle.”